Indeed, Nigeria attests to the triumph of naked power and geography over the realm of ideas. Nigeria's strength is evinced in the fact that its peacekeepers have successfully led intervention forces in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and in the fact that Nigerian businessmen are all over West Africa playing pivotal roles in local economies. Nigerians can be found as captains of continental and even global industry, if the black market sectors of business scams and drug, human, car and crude oil smuggling rackets are included. But Nigeria is weak in the sense that its own condition of semi-anarchy makes it impossible for Nigeria to police the region the way a great regional power should.
To wit, the collapse of Mali to the north is not only a function of weapons and tribesmen pouring into that country from a dysfunctional post-Gadhafi Libya, but from the very powerlessness of Nigeria -- despite being demographically and economically dominant -- to police and control its own region. Nigeria and South Africa both should be imperial powers in West Africa and southern African respectively, helping to stabilize places like Mali and the Congo. But they clearly are not due to their own internal weaknesses.
Nigeria will totter onwards. It will not descend into civil war because all the regional and ethnic groups understand limits -- and how they can all, at one point or another, benefit from a flagrant system of spoils and kickbacks. Corruption, make no mistake, while it contributes to misrule, is also a pacifying force in Nigeria. But neither will there be the emergence of a strong state.
Boko Haram will continue to use terror to pressure Jonathan, even as the Ijaw militants wait in the wings to resume their attacks on the oil pipelines if the north once again takes over the presidency following national elections in 2015. Coup d'etats cannot be ruled out either, not only because of the frustrations of northern Muslims, but because the Hausa officers' corps continue to be capable and well-educated, and thus frustrated with the weakness of civilian rulers from both the north and the south. The fear of a coup in Nigeria is one factor why coups in much less significant West African countries -- such as Mali, Niger, Guinea, Mauritania and Sao Tome are Principe -- are condemned and isolated until they return to civilian order. Nigeria needs no additional destabilizing domino effects.
It is a maxim of Western elites that economic development and global integration will lead to civil societies in places like Nigeria. There is an important element of truth in that, but such a truth has severe limits. Economic growth also leads to wider disparities as well as more spoils to fight over. In the case of Nigeria, there is effectively one spoil: those 2.5 million barrels of crude oil per day. And global society has sunk roots mainly among the elites, not among the tens of millions of people in a place like Nigeria for whom life is a constant, predatory struggle. Nigeria should keep us humble about the human condition and the persistence of national characteristics.
